Women’s Health – Madison Ayers Writes

Women Are Being Coerced into Birth Control in Their Most Vulnerable Moments

“When Crystina Hughes, a thirty-five-year-old Black woman, went to the University of Alabama Birmingham Hospital to give birth, she wasn’t considering birth control.

Immediately after giving birth to her daughter, a doctor asked if she wanted to get an IUD inserted. After all, her cervix was already dilated. Hughes said no, but once her husband left for the neonatal ICU with their newborn, the doctor asked again: Could he insert an IUD?

In her vulnerability, Hughes assumed that it must be important to have the IUD inserted now, so she relented. Around six weeks postpartum, her milk dried up, and she had to have the IUD removed after her uterus prolapsed.”

Anti-inflammatory diet can help teens with PCOS, study finds

“Did you know that almost one out of every ten teenage girls has Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS)? Though PCOS might not appear that common, the vast majority of sufferers go undiagnosed for years [1]. This is especially problematic for teenage girls who are still getting used to their cycle, and then have to deal with PCOS symptoms like irregular cycles, weight gain, and acne. Given that irregular cycles are normal and expected in the first year or two of cycling, it can be difficult for teens to know which symptoms are “just part of puberty” versus those that need to be discussed with their doctor.

No matter their body type, most women with PCOS are well aware that their condition negatively affects their metabolism and overall health. One recent study by Polish and Italian researchers sought to address these very issues with the simplest of medicines: food. The study, known hereafter as “Mizgier, M. et al.,” put a group of teenage girls of varying body types with PCOS on an anti-inflammatory Mediterranean diet to see whether it would improve their overall nutrition and metabolic health [2].

While the researchers found promising results with a Mediterranean diet, there were some points of contrast with other studies on diet and PCOS. In this article, we’ll explore Mizgier, M. et al.’s results, and we’ll take a look at how their prescribed diet was similar to (or different from) other studies on diet and PCOS.”

Read more at Natural Womanhood.

What The New York Times misses on the birth control / low libido connection

““I am convinced birth control destroyed my sex drive” says the title of a Reddit post in r/TwoXChromosomes, a women’s issues forum. Hundreds of comments follow with women describing how being on the Pill has completely changed their sex drive—and not for the better. “When I was on hormonal BC, I completely lost my sex drive” says one commenter. “[Birth control] destroyed mine and took the better part of a year to come back so I could experience what a natural female sex drive felt like,” says another.

But you don’t have to go down Reddit rabbit holes to discover women who are pinpointing their birth control as the culprit behind their weak libidos. This woman on Tiktok describes getting her libido back just days after going off the Pill, and there are a plethora of other videos describing how to fix low libido caused by birth control.

It’s not just individual women on social media who are opening up about this touchy subject — even The New York Times picked up on it. In a January 2024 article titled “The Link Between Birth Control and Sex Drive”, the author delves into what we know about how birth control can change your sex drive. While the NYT article gets a lot right, it ultimately misses the complete picture: birth control radically changes sex for every woman who takes it, on top of its disastrous effects on sex drive for some.”

Read more at Natural Womanhood.

How does blood sugar change over the course of the menstrual cycle?

“It has never been easier to accurately track our health. With smart watches, continuous glucose monitors, and a plethora of fertility monitoring devices, we now have the ability to gather precise data on many of our various biomarkers. A recent study from the University of Toronto and Queen’s University in Canada used various biotechnologies to allow participants to draw connections between their menstrual cycle and their blood sugar [1]. The conclusions from this study will help women with diabetes better tailor their insulin dosages. Women who are insulin resistant or pre-diabetic can also use this data to more fully understand how to naturally control their blood glucose.”

Read more at Natural Womanhood.

Natural Womanhood Book Review: Real Food for Gestational Diabetes

“For many women who have gone through pregnancy, their experience with gestational diabetes (GD) begins and ends with the infamous glucose tolerance test, where they drink the sickly sweet “glucola” and get their blood glucose levels tested. But for the roughly one-in-ten pregnant woman who’s given a GD diagnosis, the process of tracking blood sugar and understanding how food affects insulin levels becomes a central part of her pregnancy.

Real Food for Gestational Diabetes is a short volume from dietician Lily Nichols that takes a new approach to controlling GD through diet and exercise. With a mountain of research supporting her, Nichols helps readers understand their gestational diabetes diagnoses by giving them the tools to take their pregnancy health into their own hands. In our Real Food for Gestational Diabetes book review, we share the strengths and limitations of Nichols’ book and our recommendation on whether to buy, borrow, or pass.”

Read more at Natural Womanhood.

What is gender-specific medicine and how will it help women get better medical care?

“During her 2022 Supreme Court confirmation hearing, Justice Kentanji Brown Jackson was asked a surprisingly hot-button question: “Can you provide a definition for the word ‘woman’?” The now-Supreme Court Justice replied, “I can’t… I’m not a biologist.”

But does it really take a biologist to define what it means to be a woman or a man? After all, even infants as young as three months of age can distinguish between male and female faces [1].

Justice Jackson’s answer does point to a bit of truth, however. Certain aspects of what makes a woman a woman (or what makes a man a man) can be gleaned from scientific studies that go more than skin-deep. Gender-specific medicine (also called sex/gender-specific medicine or sex-and-gender-sensitive medicine in medical research), is a new field of science that seeks to discover exactly this: how male and female bodies differ in their disease development and response due to differences below the surface, from their hormones, to their brain structures, to their internal physiology, and even down to their DNA. In other words, gender-specific medicine recognizes (and aims to further discover) the inherent differences between men and women and the vast implications those differences have for how medicine can best treat both male and female patients.”

Read more at Natural Womanhood.

Natural Womanhood Book Review: Real Food for Fertility

“Although Dietician Lily Nichols might be best known for her work on prenatal nutrition found in Real Food for Pregnancy, many of her readers sought her advice on how to best prepare before conception. Nichols teamed up with fertility awareness expert Lisa Hendrickson-Jack in order to author Real Food for Fertility, a new volume which distills everything you need to know about how diet and lifestyle impact fertility. In this Real Food for Fertility book review, I explain why this book is an all-encompassing guide to preparing your body for pregnancy, offering hope for any woman or couple looking to conceive in the near future.”

Read more at Natural Womanhood.

A guide to trace minerals for preconception, pregnancy, and postpartum health

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Have you ever been told your iron levels are too low, or that you need more magnesium? How about getting a recommendation for a supplement like Trace Mineral Drops or electrolyte powders? Or maybe you’ve attempted to recreate the viral Adrenal Cocktail, which combines natural sources of Vitamin C, potassium, and sodium, and claims to boost your energy levels?

Minerals, including what are referred to as “trace minerals,” are a popular topic of conversation in the holistic health and wellness space. But what, exactly, are minerals– and more specifically, “trace minerals”– and what do they do for our bodies? What role do these elements play in preconception, pregnancy, and postpartum nutritional health, and how can you incorporate them more into your diet? Here, I’ll summarize the most relevant research on trace minerals for preconception, pregnancy, and postpartum nutrition.”

Read more at Natural Womanhood.

How common are PMS and PMDD in teens?

“Have you ever had that moment—perhaps right after losing your temper on an innocent friend or while crying during a rom com—when suddenly the light bulb goes off? Ah, I’m about to start my period. Why is it that our emotions can shift so much in those days right before menstruation, often coupled with physical symptoms like bloating or headaches? For many women, the challenging symptoms right before their next period starts are caused by Premenstrual Syndrome, or PMS. And for teen girls in their first few years of experiencing periods, there can be unique challenges in dealing with these issues. “

Read more at Natural Womanhood.

My experience with 28, the #1 cycle syncing app

“Five years ago, few people had heard of cycle syncing, but it has surged in popularity thanks to viral videos on TikTok and other social media sites. For young women who came of age in the 2000s or early 2010s, the idea that wellness and nutrition can work with your menstrual cycle rather than against it is revolutionary and exciting. Videos of influencers doing high-intensity interval training (HIIT) during ovulation then taking a step back during their luteal phase are a welcome change from the conventional health wisdom of twenty years ago, which focused mainly on weight-loss and encouraged unhealthy dieting practices.

A new app called 28, founded in 2022 by Evie Magazine Editor-in-Chief Brittany Hugoboom, leans into this trend by bringing an algorithm to women to help them organize their life around their cycle. Even though I already use the Sympto-Thermal Method of fertility awareness for cycle charting and family planning, I decided to use 28 for a few cycles to see if this cycle syncing app could help me not only better understand my cycle, but also reach fitness and lifestyle goals with greater ease. Here’s my review of the 28 app as someone with training in an official fertility awareness method (FAM).”

Read my review at Natural Womanhood.